Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) had dissociated itself from a communiqué purportedly issued after a summit by some Northern groups in Kaduna, in which they passed vote of no confidence on all northern politicians.
National Publicity Secretary of the Forum, Alhaji Muhammad Ibrahim said in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Kaduna that the ACF was never part of the summit.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the ACF will want to state clearly that it was never involved in the preparation nor participated in the said summit. ACF dissociates itself from the communiqué in its entirety,” Ibrahim said.
According to him, the ACF did not also mandate any of its members to represent it at the event, as such “the views expressed in the said communiqué were that of the convener and not that of ACF.”
The ACF spokesman said however that the forum acknowledged the right of individual or groups the freedom to associate as enshrined in the Constitution.
He stressed that anyone who claimed to have represents ACF at the summit or signed the communiqué on its behalf, did so on his own.
He said the ACF would offer its stance on the state of the nation at the appropriates time.
NAN reports that a coalition of northern groups comprising elders and youths had issued a communiqué in which they passed vote of no confidence on Northern politicians.
They said that the politicians had failed to “champion a massive assault on poverty and underdevelopment in the North.”
The summit gave political office holders from the North “a notice that they have failed the test to lead the region towards economic recovery and growth.”
They emphasised the rights of all northerners to examine all options in political choices they would make in 2019.
“The leadership selection process must be critically interrogated to present the best leader to Nigeria as a whole. No one should take the North for granted, and it is not for sale,” the group had stated.(NAN)
